Six Flags Discovery - A day trip

For the July 4th weekend, we decided to go on a day trip to Six flags with the cousins. It is 90 minutes away and in all our years of living here, we never visited this theme park.

It is a combination of Sea world, Disney's animal kingdowm and Universal all in one for a third of the price. Granted there are some give and takes for the price but the end result when you have a bunch of kids running around on a sugar high, a great place to spend the day!

We went in as soon as the park opened and stayed there till the park closed. Pretty much on our feet the whole time. Here are some pictures.

There was a seal show. The seals did a good job but the people in the show were too loud and annoying. The volume was too loud. Hope the seals dont hear the same frequencies we do at the same volume!

Then the little dolphin show. It was amazing. There was also another big dolphin show called Drench, but we missed it. The little dolphin show was better than the ones we have seen at Sea World. 

These 4 female dolphins were so synchronized and trained. They did a hoola hoop on their nose, threw a ball up with their "hands" and caught it in their mouth.. amazingly well trained.

Then we moved on to land animals. The tiger show was something we have never seen before. Five bengal tigers, jumping across 10 foot concrete slabs, climbing up 20 feet in one leap.. 

and diving into water and swimming! Have not seen that one before..  

 The butterfly garden was beautiful. Lots of large and small butterflies, well maintained, multiple security guards to make sure folks did not have both doors open to let butterflies out.. it was nicely done!

This one was the size of my palm!

Then we saw "feedom".. a Bald Eagle that was rescued. She posed for pictures a good 50 feet away. Was happy to get this "portrait" of her. Truly majestic and regal! On a good note, the extender and lens are fixed and seem to work okay after the repair.

The highlight though, was the fireworks. In all our life we have watched a lot of new years, disney, 4th of July fireworks. This was the best. Nice seats on a gallery. Very decent crowd. Great view of the fireworks launching pad across the water. The quality of the fireworks was also great. It was very well organized.

Tried  a slo-motion video of the first part of the fireworks on the new iPhone 6 plus. However not sure if it uploads as a slow motion video.. it is on my youtube as a separate video.. 

Was too tired to even take the canon out after the long day.. Sometimes the best camera, is the one you can hold!

Loved this day trip. It was really a pleasant day, less crowded rides, happy kids and parents after being on our feet the entire day. Cannot ask for much more!

Strongly recommended for a day trip!

Where "magic" happens

When we go to Disney, Magic always happens. 

Irrespective of your age, be it 6 or 60,  7 1/2 or 75 the faces are lit up with a smile as some person in a costume comes along and hi fives you!

The next three are not good shots. Wish I could have gone to the parade a little earlier to position myself better to capture my parents and kids instead of staying too close to them. There is always the next trip where we can do that right..

Then of course there is the fireworks and a show that we have never seen in any of our past disney trips where they project directly on the castle while the fireworks goes on. Truly spectacular!

It was not an easy shot as I was carrying the little one on my left hip (she had dozed off as it was 10PM and she had literally walked miles that day) and the Canon 5D Mark ii which weighs at least 6 lbs with a 24-105 lens had to be hand held vertically on my right hand which is not yet as strong as it could be and it had to be held as steady as possible.

The projection lit up the castle and it helped. Truth be told there is more credit to the MK ii than to me for getting this shot with this kind of contrast and clarity.

Canon, I humbly bow before you!

This was our best Disney trip ever........ so far!

We are sure they will top this experience for us in another three years when we will visit for the little one's 10th birthday celebration.

Islamorada

We were done with Orlando visiting the theme parks and had two days before flying back.

Two half days is more like it because on the first day we drove from Orlando to Miami in rain and by the time we were at the Gateway to the keys area it was almost 1 in the afternoon.

The original plan was to go all the way to Key West and back but with three old people and two kids cooped up in a Van all morning it was going to be a tough sell. 

So we stopped at the visitor center in Key Largo. 

Note: There are multiple boards that say "Visitor Center" as soon as you enter Key Largo, but only the one with the Chamber of Commerce board is the official Visitor center. The rest of them are boards which lure you in and some guy representing some other activity in Key West tells you "there is nothing here really. your only option is to go all the way to Key West". Fortunately we stopped at the real visitor center also and there was a nice lady who asked us all the right questions "how many in your party?", "how much time do you have?", "what are your preferences for activities?" etc. etc., gave us free maps and pretty much planned our afternoon for us!

So off we went to Islamorada, which was 35 minutes away and visited "The Theater of the Sea"

We spent a good three hours there doing the nature walk where we got to see their conservation effort and how they save creatures deemed unfit to release back into the wild, including a turtle that was wearing a life jacket. Seriously, not kidding. This turtle has a buoyancy defect and needs a life jacket so it can float and come up for air. 

The place is apparently family owned for 65 years. So I ask the girl who is feeding the crocs, turtles and sting rays "Are you like the Sea version of We Bought a Zoo?" and she goes "Something like that!"

Here are some pictures from the walk.

 

After the walk we were treated to a Parrot show. The kids and my camera enjoyed the show.

 

This was followed by a Dolphin Show and a Sea Lion show. They really did a great job of teaching the kids about the animals, their behaviors, even asked us to sigh a petition to protect whales from being deafened by the US Navy because of some experiments they were doing on the West Coast!

 

Did I mention how Jr. got to pet the dolphins? Odds of her being picked in Sea World were 1:1000 and here it was 1:5. There were 20 kids in the audience and they picked 4 volunteers. This is my kind of place!

The people in the park were truly sincere about conservation and cared about the creatures deeply. 

Finally we went on a small boat with an open bottom (ring boat?) where the dolphins swam within the boat, rang a bell and did some tricks for us while we went for a 10 minute ride along the mangrove forest.

It was three hours well spent and off we went to a limestone beach at John Pennekamp State park.. More on that in a couple of days!

If you visit the keys in the wrong season, this place is guaranteed to be a hit with young and old...